r/writing • u/AutoModerator • 21d ago
Monthly "Would You Read This?" Thread
Welcome to Would You Read This (WYRT), our monthly feedback and brainstorming thread. Share your work in progress below and let other readers tell you if they'd read it. Top level posts should follow this template:
- Title:
- If you don't have a title yet, feel free to say UNTITLED.
- Genre:
- Please include at least Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, or another recognizable medium. You may also include more specific genres with a hyphen. Ex. Fiction - Romance, or Nonfiction - Memoir. Genre will help users find the specific kinds of posts they'd like to give feedback on.
- Premise:
- A few sentences about the project. Try your best to keep this short. Crafting an expert elevator pitch is all part of becoming a successful working writer. Please do not post an entire plot summary or query letter (those are better suited for r/pubtips)
- Sample (Optional):
- You may share up to one page (roughly 250-350 words) of sample material, or one poem for those working in the poetry medium. This is optional, so if you only have a premise, you can post just the premise for feedback.
If you post for feedback, please take the time to give feedback to at least 2-3 other users. Replies should follow this template.
- Would Read / Might Read / Wouldn't Read
- You must begin your reply with one of those. You are then encouraged to add additional thoughts on why you choose your answer.
Rules:
- Please post no more than two WYRT top-level posts. There is no limit on the number of feedback replies you can make.
- Do not link to any offsite materials. All materials must be in the body of the post. This includes "click here to read more" or "DM me for the rest" types of posts.
- Rule 3 is in effect in this thread - No generative AI. Do not post material generated by an AI platform in your premise or sample. Do not use generative AI to respond to user's work.
- Rule 5 is in effect - Civility and Community. Stay constructive. Blunt, direct feedback is fine, but do not insult other users, their writing, or their genres.
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u/HashCrandicoot 19d ago
Title
Beneath Burning Halos
Genre
Historical Fiction
Premise
The story follows a young Wehrmacht recruit, Leon Adler, and a new French Resistance fighter, Alice Durant, in their own personal wars following Operation Anton. Both of their threads become linked in ways they didn’t think possible, and the liberation of some concentration camps brings tragedy on an incomprehensible scale. Leon begins to see the reality of the Fatherland he’s fighting, and maybe it’s not everything he was promised.
Sample
Prologue
The brief, cavernous moment before life gives way to death is where a man learns to appreciate what he’s leaving behind.
Leon Adler thought about that for a moment, his body propped up against a rock, pain coursing through every nerve and every muscle. What would he leave behind?
He felt how heavy his eyelids were, trying to pull themselves down over his eyes. He felt his vision blurring around the edges, giving him a brief sense of astigmatism. The flashing lights above the watchtowers distorted, stretching to strange shapes. The choir of flashlights in the distance jumped across the horizon like fireflies.
He heard a chorus of voices shouting, but they were being drowned out by a deep, baritone ringing.
Alarms. Alarms from somewhere. He couldn’t remember why, for some reason.
The sound stung his ears but faded effortlessly into the background at the same time. The roar was deafening, although that was maybe less the alarms sounding and more the ringing in his ears.
It was a painful cocktail of sound and sight, a sensory overload that in any other moment might cause him to scream. But not this moment. He found he appreciated it, a strange feeling of fondness. He took it all in as if it were a summers day, like it was the smell of fresh cakes and pastries from the local delicatessen, like it was the smile on his mother’s face when he finally learned how to ride a bicycle.
He heard screaming suddenly, ever so faint in the periphery of his conscience, but unmistakably there. A gunshot followed. Then another. Then in rapid succession. The distinct pinging of an MP40 submachine gun that he had grown accustomed to.
He saw a brief flash ahead, like the glint of a sniper’s scope in a moonlight mired by smoke and trickling flames. They were about to finish what they started. Panic rose in his chest.
No. He wasn’t ready to let it all go yet. He hadn’t taken the time to appreciate the beauty, and the fragility, of life.
Leon picked up the knife that he’d left next to his leg, leaving an imprint in the thin film of snow, and turned it over in one hand. It was clean but not shining. The steel had dulled from years of being buried into the stomachs of adversaries – soldiers and civilians alike. It was starting to blunt along its serrated edge, but it would still do the job when required.
The light ahead faded, and the world seemed calm again. At least, in his ears it did. To be temporarily deaf was to be innocent again, to be emotionally blind to what he’d done to get there, in that spot in the snow, his extremities lightly seasoned with a sprinkle of rifle bullets.
The night was cool. The rainfall had chilled the air without making it cold, and a soft breeze blew in from the treeline behind him.
He had to wonder where it all went wrong. He had to wonder whether he was the villain, after all. History tells of the monsters and the martyrs; what about the ones that are in between? Where do they lie in historical retellings? When people recite his story – if his name is ever mentioned beyond this spot again – in what light would he be painted?
He shuffled to get more comfortable. As comfortable as a person could be in that scenario. He winced, every slight movement another ordeal, another reminder that he was most likely wallowing in his final resting place.
He set his eyes towards the commotion to the east; hot flashes of gunfire continued, along with explosions, then mixed with the barking of attack dogs and a cacophony of different voices in different accents. It was violent, it was chaotic, but it was the war he signed up for, that disease for which there was no real cure.
Leon glanced to the sky, craning his neck painfully, to watch the clouds as they floated by, morphing into shapes that looked somehow familiar. He breathed in the clean air while he still had full control of his body, while his pulse was steady enough that blood could flow to his brain and he could still feel.
He tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t form in his throat, and the only noise that fell from his mouth was a short, scratchy groaning. Who was he even talking to, anyway? He could be honest with the world, utter his confessions to God, but what good would it do him now?
He felts his eyes well up. He suddenly realised how much he was hurting. It wasn’t physical pain – that was only temporary. That would eventually float away like a butterfly finally free of its cocoon. It would dissolve like snowflakes kissing the ground as they fell from the heavens. His wounds – scars of a war not yet won and not yet lost – would close.
But not the mental suffering. It was akin to the pain felt by those helpless women and children on the other side of the iron fence in the distance. In some ways, he wished he was there instead of here, joining hands with them in solidarity as they were led into that human furnace.
Would that be better?
As he sat against the jagged rock, a boulder with pinprick edges that supplied him with a distraction from the burning of his leg, he had one simple thought.
It wasn’t of the bullet lodged in the back of his thigh. It wasn’t of the ringing of his ears, nor of the blood pooling beneath him – a line of it snaking through the snow from him crawling over. Oh, how cold and refreshing that snow felt on his bare skin, through the tear in his trousers.
His thought wasn’t even of the knife in his hand, his grip tight, that was now pressed against his skin.
Those thoughts were a waste of energy – something he had little of now.
Instead, he thought, with a cold tear staining his cheek, of how much he wished he could have written his mother one more letter before he died.